Powder Burn - An Action Thriller Novel (Omega Series Book 8) by Blake Banner

Author:Blake Banner [Banner, Blake]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2018-08-12T16:00:00+00:00

TWELVE

I left the Zombie in the parking garage, walked to West End Avenue and hailed a cab. I climbed in and gave him the address. As we moved north, I sat back and stared out the window at the hot glare of the afternoon streets, and thought about the polarized extremes of a toxic society, where people like Francoise Troyes and Wolfgang Fokker could prey on homeless, harmless people like Zack and Hans and Hattie, and Bran, and use them as lab rats; where accountability had become one more item of politspeak, whose meaning few remembered anymore, and whose demise even fewer mourned.

Omega may be dead, but everything they stood for: the dehumanization of the weak, their enslavement to serve the bloated, complacent greed of the powerful, that lived on. For one bitter, hopeless moment, I wondered if there were any point in fighting, when in the end, if you fought for humanity, you ended up having to fight human nature.

We arrived, I paid the cabbie and rode the elevator to her floor. When she opened the door to me, her eyes were wide with fear. She didn’t greet me but looked right and left down the corridor, then stood back to let me in, searching my face anxiously.

“He didn’t call you?”

“No, he didn’t call me.”

We were in a small, over-decorated entrance hall. “He said he would call you.”

“When? How long ago?”

“A little before I phoned. Forty-five minutes ago? An hour? Come in.”

She pushed open a dark, wooden door onto a spacious room with French doors onto a small balcony at the far end. Two steps led down from a parquet dining area to a living area that was populated by over-stuffed, cream calico armchairs and a huge sofa of the same design. She took my arm and led me to one of the chairs. As I sat, she said, “What does it mean, Lacklan? What’s going on?”

“I might be able to tell you if you would tell me what he said.”

She didn’t answer straight away. She blinked a few times in rapid succession, clasping her hands in her lap, rubbing the backs of her right fingers with the heel of her left hand.

“He told me you should stop looking for him. He said it was just causing problems. I told him we couldn’t do that. We were worried about him. He said he was OK, he just wanted to be left alone, he was going back to Mexico, to his sister. I told him you were concerned for his safety. He said he’d be in touch.”

“So he’s not in Mexico yet.”

“No, I guess not. He said he was going.”

“He gave no indication of where he was?”

“None at all.”

I frowned at her, trying to piece everything together. “Why are you afraid, Lucia?”

She bit her lip. “You’re going to think I’m crazy.” She waited for reassurance. I didn’t give her any, so she went on. “Somebody has been following me.”

“Have you seen them?”

She nodded. “It’s always the same person.” She hesitated. “At least, I think it is.

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